Help me enjoy X-Com

Woot! Good to be back in action

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Tamren wrote:

At 6 metal and 15 elerium each however the flying suits are very expensive and were going to have to work hard to get them for everyone.

Prozac doesn't need one. Neither does Vega.

Do these things come with cup holders? If not, I'll pass; I don't want to be spilling my drink during a mission. You think those suits are expensive? You should try finding all the ingredients to make one of these Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters. I won't risk a single drop. Besides, I can probably cover Quintin better from down here.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Tamren wrote:

At 6 metal and 15 elerium each however the flying suits are very expensive and were going to have to work hard to get them for everyone.

Prozac doesn't need one. Neither does Vega.

Smiting people as Commissar would be a lot easier if I was able to fly.

Tamren wrote:

... As Dr Awkward is down we will be bringing back Judge as Judge II to fill in the teams....

Woohoo! Zombie Judge!
Hmm... or would that be Judge Phoenix?

The alien bastards hit Vancouver? Sign me up!

I'll be the Drill Instructor who got himself busted down to Private just so he could get one last chance to throw himself into the line.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Tamren wrote:

At 6 metal and 15 elerium each however the flying suits are very expensive and were going to have to work hard to get them for everyone.

Prozac doesn't need one. Neither does Vega.

Did you hit anything that entire mission?

Moral support!

wordsmythe wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:
Tamren wrote:

At 6 metal and 15 elerium each however the flying suits are very expensive and were going to have to work hard to get them for everyone.

Prozac doesn't need one. Neither does Vega.

Did you hit anything that entire mission?

Let's just say the farmer's wife was waiting for him in the barn when the mission was over.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:
Tamren wrote:

At 6 metal and 15 elerium each however the flying suits are very expensive and were going to have to work hard to get them for everyone.

Prozac doesn't need one. Neither does Vega.

Did you hit anything that entire mission?

Let's just say the farmer's wife was waiting for him in the barn when the mission was over.

Just watch out for Chrysalid Finger--->Butt

Rat Boy wrote:

Smiting people as Commissar would be a lot easier if I was able to fly.

Don't turn around!

First Goodjer to get Zombified, It has to be described as:

Tanglebones wrote:

Chrysalid Finger--->Butt

Prozac wrote:

First Goodjer to get Zombified, It has to be described as:

Tanglebones wrote:

Chrysalid Finger--->Butt

In that case...

Rat Boy wrote:

Finger -> Trigger -> Bullet -> Head

I just finished playing UFO: Alien Invasion. That is, playing it to its current completion. My impressions:

- Completely unlike the XCOM series, AI has a lot of writing in it. The UFOpedia entry for a simple handgun can have multiple pages of technical specifications, historical performance in combat, ending with its recommendations for use by PHALANX. PHALANX being this games version of XCOM.
- Combat has a ton of variety in the weapons you can take along and the terrain you fight on. Unlike XCOM you can't save during combat. So some maps can get stressful as you hunt down the final alien. I have fought on maps in jungles, forests, cities and deserts. The local terrain can be anything from a parking garage to a multi-level underground mining complex.
- The amount of stuff happening around the world at once is huge. Overwhelming to be honest. Imagine playing XCOM1 when 20 UFOs can show up per month. And thats when you only have a single continent of radar coverage! Shooting them all down and recovering the wrecks can get tedious. The number of terror missions also seems excessive.
- PHALANX Air power is a lot weaker compared to XCOM. You get two types of aircraft to work with. Stiletto craft are your basic interceptor with 3 weapon mounts. Its kind of like a helicopter mixed with the A-10 warthog. They have to fight in packs or they don't stand a chance. Even sending 3 at once versus the toughest UFO will always result in the loss of one. The other type, the Saracen, is sort of like the Stealth bomber mixed with the SR71. Its a high speed long ranged interceptor, but weaker because it only has 2 weapon mounts. I didn't find them all that useful.
- Instead of salvaging UFOs instantly you have to build UFO hangars on the world map. These store captured UFOs and wrecks. You then use your workshops to disassemble them into their component parts. However this takes a very long time. Even with 7 whole workshops with 70 technicians it can take 600 hours or more. Annoyingly a totally wrecked UFO at 20% takes just as long to take apart as a fully equipped 100% UFO. And you get maybe 10% of the material out of it. Hence, don't bother to recover wrecked UFOs. You have the opportunity to sell them off instead of recovering them. This keeps nations happy and provides a useful cash stream.
- Research happens a lot slower than it did in XCOM. 10 scientists working on a problem might solve it in a month. 50 scientists might solve 2-4 problems a month. Each research item comes complete with a very interesting and detailed "proposal" report, and a larger "complete" report.

The limits of the current version are your ability to create fighter craft out of alien technology. After that point the very interesting tech tree simply comes to an end. But thanks to antimatter engines it is hinted by your scientists that the new fighter craft are capable of orbital spaceflight. And your subordinates recommend reconnaissance flights to other planets in the solar system as a top priority.

So the game has come a long way since I last tried it years ago. And from the looks of it has a lot of room to grow as well. Will definitely keep my eye on this game.

----

And back to your regularly scheduled XCOM. Now, as you might have gotten the impression thus far. The current game is proving to be a bit easy. I only set the difficulty on Experienced which is only one step above novice. One possible cause for this is those 2 months or so when we were really unable to do anything. Since we didn't shoot down any UFOs the alien difficulty timer might have backed up a step. Even if our research efforts didn't.

In any case my current plan is to fast forward a bit and make a big push to get us to Cydonia. Then, once this game is over start another one. This time on Genius level. On Genius level even sectoids can withstand multiple laser hits. To say nothing of mutons! That should be fun, and might even see me lose.

Are you playing with the fan-made patch to fix the difficulty bug?

I suppose I could. I have already played through one game with Xcomutil. The problem is Xcomutil changes the game in a plethora of ways. It even allows you to put soldiers on the interceptor! Though if we end up doing TFTD there is no way I would play it without xcomutil.

I'm not quite sure how to get it to work with the Steam version though. Usually what it does is mod the game then give you a very specific shortcut file to run it. But the Steam version is packed with DOSbox so that might not work.

It's supposed to work with the Steam version (it detects that you are running the Steam version) and set things up accordingly. I tried it but kind of rushed it, not paying close attention to the directions, and I couldn't get it to work. Have yet to take my time and try again, though I think I will because having to re-equip a full squad every mission + the weird lag in the Steam dos-box version is super annoying.

By the way, though, Xcomutil advanced install lets you choose yes or no for every single option. So you can just patch, say, the difficulty save game bug and let it save your squad loadout, and nothing else.

On another issue: I can't for the life of me get a HWP onto my Skyranger. I bought a Tank/Cannon and 20 or so HWP cannon rounds (I'm pretty sure they aren't regular intercepter cannon rounds, they say HWP on them), they are both in my general stores, but when I go to equip the Skyranger, don't see the rounds at all, and if I try to put the tank on the craft it says I can't, not enough rounds to arm the tank. Anyone have any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Also has anyone found a solution to clear up the horrible stuttering and lag on the geoscape in the steam version?

Khoram wrote:

I bought a Tank/Cannon and 20 or so HWP cannon rounds (I'm pretty sure they aren't regular intercepter cannon rounds, they say HWP on them), they are both in my general stores, but when I go to equip the Skyranger, don't see the rounds at all, and if I try to put the tank on the craft it says I can't, not enough rounds to arm the tank. Anyone have any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

First--I know it's a stupid question, but bear with me--have the rounds actually been delivered? If so, how many? I think that HWP actually has a required minimum to be operational. Second--again stupid, I know--are you leaving enough room in the Skyranger for the HWP? You need at least 4 slots for it.

1 - yes they were delivered, I was able to sell them when it didn't work. Don't recall how many I had, though.
2 - yes I had room for it, the message specifically states it can't load the HWP due to inability to re-arm (or words to that effect).

No biggie, I have never used HWP before and I've beat the game several times, but was inspired to this go round from reading that fantastic live play on penny arcade. Just thought it was weird I couldn't do it.

Than you didn't have enough ammo. Next time just buy 50 and you'll be golden.

Hmm ok yeah I doubt I had that many rounds.

----------------

Let's talk theoretically for a second. If, say, someone were to make an X-Com type of game, what would be the top 3 things you'd like to see improved or added? What things would be a deal breaker if they were changed or weren't included? Just curious.

I haven't played in quite awhile, but don't Tanks, soldiers, and fighters all use different "cannon" rounds? I think that you may have bought Heavy Cannon High Explosive Rounds for the soldiers instead of the ones that the tanks use.

(It's a international coalition, how much standardization can you expect?!)

Khoram the HWP has an ammo capacity of 30. You just need more shells. But only get about 60 or so. I find the rocket tank to be more useful in general. And the cannon will become obsolete once you get the awesome laser tank.

Khoram wrote:

Also has anyone found a solution to clear up the horrible stuttering and lag on the geoscape in the steam version?

I have this problem too. It kind of surprised me because I own the windows collector's edition of XCOM and it ran a lot smoother in general. Here is what to do:

1. Go into your steamapps directory and the XCOM folder.
2. Find a file called dosbox.conf and open it up in notepad.
3. Scroll down until you find the CPU section and change "cycles" to 50000.

You might have to tweak it a bit. If you set it too high the sound will start to stutter. But too low and the choppy geoscape is still a problem. Alternately, there is a hotkey to up cycles by increments of 500 while the game is running. I think its shift-F12, but you might have to look it up. Just use the hotkey until you find the sweet spot and then change the default cycle setting to that number.

While your at it, scroll up a bit and change the "scaler" setting to either normal3x, or hq3x. Gives you a bigger window to play in. Assuming you don't like fullscreen. Normal simply changes each original pixel to 2x2 or 3x3 pixels. The high quality setting does a bit of smoothing. as you can see in my screenshots.

Hope that helps.

Cool thanks for the info!

Any opinions on my other questions? If you were remaking X-Com*:

1. What would be the top 3 things you'd like to see improved or added?
2. What things would be a deal breaker if they were changed or weren't included?

* [size=8]I am not aware of anyone doing so (though I'm looking forward to Isochron on the iPad), just curious[/size]

I'd want to be able to give group orders: everyone stand, crouch, move here. This was available in Silent Storm and very useful.

I'd like modern UI: mousewheel support, tooltips, improved load-out screens. I don't want to consult the manual to figure out what the buttons do. I want there to be quicker ways to get things done. Like a one-button "strip all equipment from all soldiers".

Uh, I can't think of a third thing. But lack of the first two would be a deal-breaker.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I'd want to be able to give group orders: everyone stand, crouch, move here. This was available in Silent Storm and very useful.

I'd like modern UI: mousewheel support, tooltips, improved load-out screens. I don't want to consult the manual to figure out what the buttons do. I want there to be quicker ways to get things done. Like a one-button "strip all equipment from all soldiers".

Uh, I can't think of a third thing. But lack of the first two would be a deal-breaker.

Feature #3: I want it to not suck all the fun out by making missions overly long, diffucult and underwater.

The biggest annoyance for me is the difficulty in loading out my troops. I want to be able to build as many templates as I want (Sniper, Sniper Night, Grenadier, Heavy Weapons, Medic, etc etc etc). When I update a template when I get new tech I want the option to upgrade it for everyone else that shares that template. I want to be able to change the templates of everyone before the chopper leaves the base and have the chopper automatically load and unload weapons for it, and I want to be able to put any of my soldiers (with any template) in any location on the chopper.

As far as existing issues go, I really don't want to see anything taken out. I need destructible terrain and a global strategic map coupled with research, base building, and tactical battles.

I'm up for an attempt to modernize the tactical battles a bit, synchronized turns would be pretty neat.

I'd make one change to the turn-based battles: allow continuous movement until an enemy is engaged, like in Jagged Alliance 2 or Fallout Tactics. That would remove some of the tedium of hunting for the last remaining alien.

Pre-set the loadouts for everyone on my squad, along with their arrangement in the aircraft. Having to re-arrange everyone's equipment at each mission is incredibly annoying.

Civilian AI that includes things like "oh, crap, there are aliens, I'm going to hide under a table" would be nice, instead of the "hey, look, lots of people with rocket launchers, I'll go stand in the middle of the street now".

ExitPursuedByBear wrote:

I'd make one change to the turn-based battles: allow continuous movement until an enemy is engaged, like in Jagged Alliance 2 or Fallout Tactics. That would remove some of the tedium of hunting for the last remaining alien.

That's a good one -- JA2 did that brilliantly.

Reading this thread made me nostalgic so I started up a new game of TFTD. Somehow I got a Sonic Cannon in the first month and had it researched before my first terror attack. Even my green squad could still have an aimed shot of 70%+ accuracy. I dread using harpoon guns in a terror attack.

I haven't even tried XCOMUtil or anything, but I'd pay a hefty sum to not have to equip my guys every single mission.